


these jealous gods

by silverhedges



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Miscommunication, Mystery, Secret Identity, botw!link and botw!zelda feature prominently, brief hints of urbosa/zelda and link/ganondorf, ganondorf is a bad detective, that's it that's the fic, ww ganondorf + ss zelda haunt BotW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 08:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11527998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhedges/pseuds/silverhedges
Summary: In the spirit world, the incarnation of the Goddess Hylia and the last man to remember the desert meet. Zelda is called away by prayer to a strange, ruined Hyrule. She takes Ganondorf with her. As they explore this wild new world, they uncover the consequences of each other’s deepest, darkest secrets.





	these jealous gods

His first thought upon opening his eyes is that he is in the Sacred Realm. There is nowhere else that looks like this: all white everywhere, humming with power. The question remains of how he would have entered the Sacred Realm (a tricky thing to do, and not for the faint of heart) and the repercussions thereof. There are always repercussions. Ganondorf learned that too late in life.

He raises a hand to his forehead to check it. No Master Sword. No wound no matter how hard he rubs. If being killed by the brat of destiny for the second time was a hallucination or a dream, it only benefited him to welcome it.

What of the Triforce? He can feel the absence of the Triforce of Power acutely. It is like shaving one’s hair, or having one’s hand cut off; he keeps instinctively checking for it, only to find it gone. It has been with him for so long that he scarcely remembers his life before claiming it. Ganondorf wants it back.

If he’s in the Sacred Realm, that will be easier to accomplish. The Triforce goes there after a wish has been granted. By Din, his anger still burns – that foolish, long-forgotten, idiot King! To condemn his own Kingdom under the sea! Why could he not see that Ganondorf was attempting to reclaim it?!

Then the sky opens up.

It is not an unveiling; it is simply that one moment all had been white and the next there are blue skies all about him. Ganondorf looks down to realise that he is standing on the white clouds. He had never given much thought to what the world above the clouds looked like. Examining the area around him, he concludes that it must be like this.

It is distasteful to him. All that matters to him is Hyrule, the solid earth beneath his feet. This airy sky, the endless sea, they have nothing for him. There is no future for him here. Back to Hyrule Ganondorf must go!

“It is not often I have visitors here.”

The voice is melodious. Ganondorf turns. Is it Din…? No, no, not at all. Look at her eyes.

A young woman is strolling towards him through the clouds. Her clothes are as white as this empty space, her golden hair adorned only by crystal. Her eyes are the same blue as the unending sky.

They are the same eyes as the dark blue eyes that glared at him out the castle window, in another world and lifetime. The same eyes that looked upon him, not so long ago, with a black gaze and the Master Sword gripped in her gloves. Ganondorf is not cursed by the same reincarnation that forces the princess and the hero to live again, but he has lived long enough to recognise the gaze of Zelda.

She is not a Zelda he has met before, however.

“Princess Zelda,” he spits out. “I should have known you would follow me even here.”

“Princess…?” She remarks idly, serene. “I do not believe we have met, and yet you know my name. How strange!”

“What is this place? What hell have you brought me to?”

“I have not brought you anywhere.” She halts, her skirts swishing in a wind that doesn’t exist. “I’ll introduce myself. My name is Zelda. Formerly of Skyloft, previously of the Land Below. Who are you?”

Ganondorf studies her, arms crossed across his chest, wishing for his swords. No Princess. No Hyrule. Perhaps he has been displaced in time and the Master Sword has sealed him away. Perhaps this is a future where people have forgotten Hyrule entirely and have resorted to living in the skies to avoid the poisonous sea. The thought sends an ache spiking through his chest, his throat tight. Oh, to think of the wide and open fields of Hyrule when he had been young.

He has not needed to introduce himself to anyone in a long time; his reputation precedes him. His name feels strange on his tongue. “Ganondorf Dragmire,” he says stiffly. Master of the Forbidden Fortress. The King of Thieves. The Prince of Darkness. He knows better than to say those titles.

“Two names? Curious indeed. But then again, you are the first man to come here.”

A sudden weariness crashes over him. The days when he could enter female paradises as the only man are long gone. His sisters are lost far beneath the sea. “If this is the Sacred Realm, then you are surely wrong about that, child.”

“The Sacred Realm…?” Zelda folds her hands and raises an eyebrow. “Ah, do you mean the Silent Realm? No. This is most certainly not it.”

“Then where are we?”

“You might not like the answer.”

Around them, there is endless sky and clouds. Nothing else, as far as his eyesight can reach. No living beings, no change of scenery. No sign that anything besides them exists. Lacking in danger, certainly, but as boring as an empty castle. Perhaps that is the true hell – being trapped alone with a Zelda he doesn’t know, forever.

A Zelda with such an unreadable face, too.

In another lifetime, the Princess had lacked any subtlety like any other child, and therefore all but screamed her plans and her hatred out to the world. Ganondorf has had years to think of how misled he was regarding Sheik – and he does not remember much of the end, of what happened when he was the beast Ganon. Sometimes he dreams of flashes of storm-filled skies and the terror on the face of the Hero of Time and those dark blue eyes as the Princess aimed in anger.

The pirate brat meanwhile, has the open face of a child but the slyness that comes with her profession. Perhaps that is simply a quality inherent to all Princesses of Hyrule: the ability to be two-faced, wise in deception, a natural liar.

This young woman resembles a goddess. Ganondorf is reminded of the personifications of the Golden Goddesses in the old Temple of Time. Her face is smooth, unbeaten by the sun and wind and although he professes to be completely unfamiliar with Hylian beauty standards, he has never seen hair and eyes so vivid. She is a living statue.

If there is a link between this stereotypical white-clothed maiden and the smelly pirate, it is that both of them have no appreciation for Hyrule. At least the first one had that.

“Tell me anyway. There is nothing here that can change my reaction.”

She spreads her hands and smiles apologetically, although it does not reach her eyes. “This is a place for those between death and life. A place at the edge of time. For example, I myself… ah, no, that is a conversation left for another time. Well. There was another Zelda here, a long time ago. She was petrified by a wizard and turned to stone. Not dead, not alive. Could anything like that have happened to you?”

Ganondorf raises a hand to his forehead. “I was struck by a sword,” he says, half to himself. “It does have sealing powers…”

“A sword that has sealing powers?” Zelda echoes. She studies him. “The Master Sword?”

Ganondorf laughs a short, dark laugh. It surprises him and hurts his throat. “You don’t know who I am, you know not of the Sacred Realm or Hyrule, but you know of the Master Sword?”

“I know what Hyrule is,” she says abruptly and then turns, walking away. “You had not mentioned it before, Master Dragmire.”

Ganondorf follows her (she is such a tiny woman, much smaller than any of his sisters), looming above her back, scoffing. “And what Hyrule would you know, child? Let me guess: an endless sea, an open sky. Water and air and no good green land at all.”

Zelda stops and looks over her shoulder, a bemused and piercing look in her eyes.

He knows then that he has misjudged something. The thought would have been followed by anger (and then a tantrum, his mothers would have said) if he had been a century younger. Time has given him patience and all he does is resolve to be more careful with his wording. Information is everything.

She opens her pink mouth and then closes it. Then she turns back to him, golden hair swaying over her shoulder and she offers out her hand to him.

Ganondorf stares at her.

“If you ever want to find Hyrule again, or know who I truly am, take my hand.” Her face is as impassive as she has always been in the five minutes he has known her.

“What will happen if I do?” Frankly, Ganondorf is nearly a century and a half, and he has no desire to hold the hand of any young woman who is not his sister. Especially the Princess of Hyrule (…a version of her, at least).

“You can’t leave here without my help,” she replies.

Well. That is one convincing argument.

He reaches out and covers her cold hand with his callused own.

…

It is sunset and the sky is red. They find themselves on the peak of a snowy mountain. Ganondorf blinks once, uncomprehending of what he sees before him. A delusion; a dream. The wish of a desperate heart. A fantasy in the mind of a dying man, sliced by a sword. This could not possibly be real.

Hyrule lies before him, the green land he had only held in his memory. The only person left to remember.

Ganondorf sinks to his knees, overcome by unbearable emotion. His throat tightens, chest aching, vision blurring. Zelda says something about going down to the temple, but he pays her no heed. This all surpasses her. This is all so much. It is too much.

She said that he had died.

What _had_ happened, in the flooding Hyrule with the children…?

He had lost, once more. Ganondorf is not truly surprised. After the Triforce (and his heart clenches in anger) was lost to him, had he truly expected to live? No. But he wanted to taste victory again, even if just for a moment before the waters crashed down. Like he had when he arose from death as a beast and found that there was no Hero to stop him.

(Ah. There had been another Princess, had there not? He had not seen her. She ran away and left her father to make his mistakes on his own. Would the Princess ever come to face him on her own? To fight the snarling beast, the calamity that claimed her kingdom for his own? No. She needs the stacked odds, her pawn with the sword to do the dirty work while she aims a bow. On her own, she is useless.

They are all the same. Where is this Zelda’s chosen Hero?)

Yet, he had lost the Triforce of Power. So he would have died a mortal death. Except he had been stabbed with the Master Sword, which seals away evil. (He is not evil, a voice snarls in the back of his mind, but then he thinks of his empty castle and when he called himself the Prince of Darkness. Who does he have to blame if they believe he’s evil?) So then, maybe he had been sealed away – turned to stone, as this Zelda said another had been.

A stone statue beneath the ocean, in the bedrock of what remained of his precious Hyrule. The Master Sword in his head. What a fate, for a man who had once been so promising. Who strode into the Sacred Realm and stole the Triforce from the Goddesses. Ganondorf is sick to death of goddesses.

There is no one left to mourn him, anyway.

So that explains why he has ended up in this half-death. However, then there is the matter of this mysterious Zelda. Plus the Hyrule he has ended up in.

For, even as sun disappears over the horizon and night shadows the sky, Ganondorf can see that this is not the Hyrule of his youth. Firstly, the glowing towers sprouted up throughout the land, bright orange like a signal. The little orange lumps, too. Secondly, this geography is just simply not the geography he knows. His head spins as he turns, trying to see if any landmarks he can see are in their right place. Ganondorf had memorised the map of Hyrule even as a young child in the desert; he knows this land does not match.

Thirdly, there is something wrong with Hyrule Castle. It calls towards him instantly. He is memorised by the thought of that empty castle, his once more. Yet, there is something about that leaves a rotten taste in his mouth, even miles and miles and away. The castle glows, wreathed in humming power, turned black and pinkish red, like blood seeping into water. No matter how hard he looks, there are no answers and so he reluctantly tears his gaze away.

Then, then!

He has turned his sight to the south.

The desert is dark and cold now and there is a strange storm but the town in the middle of the desert is unmistakable. His heart leaps into his throat. Could it be…? No, surely not. He is dead and this is not his Hyrule and whoever is in that town, they will not be Nabooru and his sisters.

(Ganondorf has never outgrown being able to hope; a small flame of it alights in his chest even as he thinks those rational thoughts.)

Zelda is coming back. He does not hear her, but he can see from this vantage point, her gliding gracefully over the snow up to him. There is the question of her, too. It was another Zelda she had spoken of as being petrified by a wizard, not herself. Then his mind sharpens and he recalls history lessons as a child, desperate to know anything about the Hyrule he had not seen.

A petrified Princess, a purple-robed wizard, a Hero who had a talking green hat… a myth, a bedtime story for the children of Hyrule.

_It was said it had happened near the beginning of Hyrule’s story._

Who _is_ this woman?

His thoughts are derailed when he sees the temple she came from. Even in the dark, he knows it and his breath catches as he identifies the Temple of Time. His Temple. Ruined beyond repair, but – how could it be here?! It is supposed to be in Castle Town! How…?!

_Geography._

“What are you scowling at?” Zelda’s light voice floats through the air. As she herself is doing.

Ganondorf crouches down and places his hand in the snow. His hand goes right through and he finds himself fist-deep in snow and feeling nothing despite being desert-born. Ah. So he really is a ghost. In the wake of the other revelations today, Ganondorf cannot find the emotional capacity to care that much about it. He mentally shrugs and stands up.

“Is this your Hyrule?” he directs to her.

“No,” she replies and does not explain further.

“How did we get here?”

Then she displays perhaps one of the first signs of emotion he’s seen from her. She bites her lip, looking away. Not a stone goddess after all! (Although she bears no resemblance to the statues of the Goddess of Sand.)

Ganondorf crosses his arms. “Will you explain or not? It was you who brought me here – do you not owe me an explanation?”

Zelda shakes her head at him and a cross look flashes upon her face. (He is slightly surprised.) “I do not owe you anything, Master Dragmire,” she snaps at him.

He does not dignify that with a response, instead holding his head high.

Zelda sighs. She sounds weary. She sounds like the Deku Tree, taking its last breath. “I was called here,” she explains. “Through time and space. I chose to come and I chose to take you with me here. But I can only come when called. I know nothing of this land and what has happened to it since I was last called.”

“Called?” he echoes. “Why were you called?”

Zelda closes her eyes. For a moment they stand there in silence. The moon has come out through the clouds and turns her golden hair to silver, her white clothes glowing in the dark. How long has she been here, between life and death?

“Please, save your questions for another time,” she at last says, opening her eyes.

It is a reason akin to the reason he had spared the lives of the pirate brat and the kid trying on green clothes and a sword. Pity for the net of destiny that has stolen their lives away and made them into living myths. Perhaps this Zelda lives in a far future and her Hero has searched the skies desperately in vain for her for a long, long time.

“Very now,” he acquiesces. “But what shall we do now – do we return to the sky prison?”

“No,” she says, eyes going distant. “I shall be called about, ah, thirty more times before I can leave for good. I might as well stay until I can be sure I shall not be interrupted constantly.” She looks at him properly. “So we can go anywhere, if you so wish.”

Go anywhere. Ganondorf grins, for the first time in what seems like forever. His grin is not nice, for the way Zelda grimaces. “I know exactly where to go,” he declares.

…

Zelda is laughing. He did not think the girl could laugh, but she does now. She laughs like a child, happy and light. (He has never seen _any_ Zelda laugh.)

“I did not realise you had this in mind!” she calls to him over the wind.

There is only one thing Ganondorf has always wanted to do and never been able to. So here they are: riding horses through the great plain of Hyrule.

Being ghosts, they can’t interact with any animals, but there are plenty enough wild horses running free to get atop their backs and pretend. Ganondorf enjoys this; the wind in his hair, the galloping steps, the green world rushing past. (He does wonder if there is a horse like his own in this Hyrule.)

Zelda is being a little strange, however. It is as if she has never rode a horse before. She sits with a leg on either side at least, but she spreads her arms wide and does not even try to grip onto the horse like any rider would. Her golden hair flies like a banner in the wind.

“What do you call these!” she yells to him.

“Riding?!”

“The animals!”

“Horses!”

Zelda smiles wide, white teeth flashing. Then she throws herself off the horse.

Ganondorf disembarks immediately – a shot of fear had gone through his heart instinctively. The way she had thrown herself off – no living woman would survive that. Indeed she tumbles through the grass and lies still for a moment. He hurries over to her. (She is his only way out of here, after all.)

If she was alive, her white dress and hair would be covered in grass and mad. As in, she maintains an image of perfection, even sitting up smiling in the grass. “I’ve never done that before!” she says cheerfully.

“What, never ridden horses?”

“No,” she says, still smiling. It must hurt to smile so much. “We rode birds, where I come from.”

“…Birds.”

“Birds!”

…

This Hyrule is strange. Ganondorf has never really had time to explore it on his own – he has always had a mission in mind while being in Hyrule. He has not yet figured out a way to ask about the Triforce. However, he knows it in his bones. If there is Hyrule, there will be a Triforce.

There is plenty to distract them. This world is ruined. Stone houses are crumbling and overgrown. Whatever happened to Hyrule, it happened long ago. Fruit and mushrooms grow all around. The wild has moved in and there are animals everywhere of every kind: deer and boar and foxes and squirrels and endless birds. As far away as they are, he can spot some large animal pacing Death Mountain, again and again and again.

He revels in the weather: lightning storms and rain and sun and cloud. Dear Din, he has missed the way the mountains look in the fog, how the ground turns to mud in rain. Sometimes Zelda is ‘called’ away and she leaves him alone while he rolls in mud like one of his pet pigs.

This is life. This is what Hyrule is meant to look like. Not an empty poisonous sea, or an open endless sky; a world teeming with life in every corner.

If he had the ability to touch the world, he would wring those Koroks’ necks, however. _Ya-ha-ha_ is going to haunt his dreams.

There are less travellers on the road than he knew in his time. Of course, that comes as no surprise. After the first time a Hylian wandered in sight while they were exploring old ruins and the broken down robots revived themselves…

He is glad it is not his task to fight them. Their octopus-ivy-robot appearance leaves an uneasy taste in his mouth. Zelda did cry so much when the Hylian died. She sat down and buried her face in her hands and wept. Ganondorf had sat down beside her and looked at her bewildered. It seemed a bit much for a stranger she did not even know.

“This is all my fault,” she said tearfully.

Really, she’s just being melodramatic.

Then the boy comes.

Zelda sights him first. She sees him coming down over the fields they are watching in the morning sunlight. Getting up, she beckons to the Prince of Thieves to come hide behind a wall with her. Grumbling, he does so.

This boy seems a boy like any other. Ganondorf doesn’t understand why they are supposed to watch him. Brown hair tied into a ponytail, blue eyes, mismatched clothing. He understands even less the look on Zelda’s face.

She presses herself to the wall, hands gripping the edge. Her eyes are captured, pink mouth open. She looks at this boy like a traveller would look at the moon; full of wondrous longing. She is whining softly, without even realising it. She looks at that boy like she’s looking at a long-gone lover.

“ _Link_ ,” she breathes, and then Ganondorf understands.

His head whips back to the boy. No green clothes, no hat, no Master Sword. How is he supposed to know that this boy is Link? How does she know?

He voices this, incredulously.

“I know him,” Zelda says, half in tears. “I would know him anywhere.”

Ganondorf stares at her. He hadn’t realised the Princess thought of the Hero as anything other than her pawn. That’s what he is; the boy she sends off to do her dirty work and bleed when she cannot afford to. (He wonders, yet again, why her Hero hasn’t saved this Zelda yet.)

“You sound like you’re in love with him,” he says confusedly.

“I am,” she whispers, pressing her fingers to the wall. “Oh, I am. Desperately.”

There is nothing Ganondorf can say to that. He has never been in love; he simply does not understand.

It is something to ponder, however. Zelda, in love with the heroic Link? The first one and the Hero of Time had barely known each other. (Then again, _Sheik_ – shut up.) The pirate brat and the kid are definitely too young for that sort of thing. And why is she looking at this Link? This is not her world, ergo this is not her Hero. She cannot be saying that all Princesses are in love with their Heroes. Why send them off to die then?

The question of why the boy is travelling has an obvious answer. There is something wrong with the castle – he is most likely on a quest to defeat it. So where is his Princess? Hiding away in some safe place to give him orders, shielded by that Sheikah woman, Ganondorf thinks contemptuously. Although why the boy isn’t wearing green is completely beyond him. It just looks wrong.

“So where is yours, then?” He asks, unable to help himself.

“Mine…?” Zelda blinks up at him, as if she had forgotten he was there. (He could give her _reasons_ to remember him.)

“Your Hero. _Link_.” He says the name distastefully.

She presses her face down against the wall, golden hair shielding her expression. Ganondorf shifts awkwardly. Perhaps he should not have asked. The silence stretches on and the boy has passed out of their sight now. A shudder goes through Zelda’s shoulders.

Finally she lifts her head up, eyes clear.

“He’s dead,” she says quietly.

Ganondorf definitely should not have asked.

(Her Hero dead and herself trapped in some half-life? No wonder she’s like a statue.)

…

Their first Blood Moon comes as a complete surprise.

They are wandering across the plains, going down a dusty trial. Ganondorf is subtly trying to lead them south. The castle is behind them, still in view. Time passes for them and neither of them seems to need to eat or sleep. Ganondorf is grateful for that; it means he can soak in the sights and smells of Hyrule without being interrupted.

Night is falling tensely. The air is sharp and crisp and a light wind is blowing.

When red-black fragments begin appearing in the air, then they know something is wrong. Zelda gasps and makes as if to hide behind the nearest tree. Ganondorf snarls at the air and wishes for his swords, as if he could fight the sky. All the animals are hiding and the world is silent.

Then the sky turns a dark, rich red and the clouds whirl, racing by with unnatural speed. The moon is glowing an unnatural crimson colour. It goes faster and faster and faster and suddenly Ganondorf notices the creatures. Monsters bursting into life in red-pink-black clouds, eyes dead and glossy and red.

Then it’s over, just like that.

Ganondorf looks down to find Zelda hiding behind him.

“Let’s hope that never happens again,” she mutters and he has to agree.

…

“Let’s go south,” he eventually outright suggests. “To the desert.”

“The desert?” Zelda questions, wrapping her arms around herself and sighing. “Why the desert?”

Ganondorf does not owe her the truth. But he doesn’t have to lie completely. “I want to see my people,” he says, thinking of his proud, strong sisters. “I want to know that they are doing well.”

Zelda stops. “Your people?” she echoes. There is a line between her golden eyebrows.

“Yes,” he says, turning and glaring. He folds his arms, a tad impatient. If he had been younger, he might have tapped his foot. But he is an old man now, even if his beard will never grow any longer. “The Gerudo, of course.”

She blinks at him. “I’ve never heard of them.”

Ganondorf stares at her. She really does have no idea who he is or where he came from. Which makes his own position easier, but simply brings up more questions about this Zelda and where she is from. He has not forgotten that she rejected being called Princess, that she spoke of being ‘called’, that her Hero is dead but she speaks of myths as if she knew them.

(Of course, it could be that at the ‘edge of time’, she has met everyone who has ever been petrified. Her story of the past cannot reconcile with the fact that she must be from the future – he has never heard of anything in Hyrule’s past to suggest a Hero who died before rescuing his Princess. Perhaps she is from a time where the Hylians have taken to the skies and rejected the concept of monarchy. But that does not explain why she has been ‘called’.)

“They’re…” Ganondorf finds himself wordless. It is like trying to explain Hyrule to the pirate Princess. Like having to explain swimming to the Zoras. It is something that she simply should just know. “…how about you come and see for yourself?”

Zelda studies him. “Are they all like you?”

Ganondorf laughs right from his belly. “There is no one like me,” he says derisively.

So they go to the desert.

It is a benefit to them that they are dead, otherwise the heat would have made it impossible to get the Hylian across the desert. It is clear that she has never been to a desert like this from the way she looks around wide-eyed and awkwardly walks. When they pass the bazaar in the middle of the desert, Ganondorf catches himself of some Gerudo selling wares, calling to each other in their own language.

His heart is infinitely lighter at witnessing that. He feels like a young man again, before he had ever glimpsed the green fields of Hyrule.

Finally, they stand in front of the entrance to Gerudo Town.

Ganondorf looks up at the Gerudo symbol carved into the wall and feels a sense of belonging. Here. These are his people. The guards are young and strong and alive and Ganondorf has never been so happy to see them doing their job. The town glimmers with unending sunlight and dust.

He takes the first steps inside, paying no heed to what Zelda is doing. He is a ghost and so the guards do not prevent him. The town inside is nothing like the fortress of his time and yet, and yet, he looks around and he still feels at home. Their only son. Their only brother. Din, he wishes he was alive.

_(What he would do for the Triforce…)_

Palm trees line the walkway up to the seat of the King. Red-haired children run about laughing. Sellers call out to customers in the midday sun and Din, it has been so long since he has heard so much of his own language. A tall Gerudo muses while leaning against a palm tree. Side corridors lead off to unexplored places. Sand seals bark in their cages. Underneath it all, there is the soft whisper of running water.

“They’re all women,” Zelda whispers, startled. “And they all look like you!”

Ganondorf had forgotten she was there. (She is only half the height of his sisters, after all.) He looks down at her and drawls, “If they are _my_ people, one would expect them to look like _me_.”

He spends a significant amount of time wandering about the town. Checking in on the training of the guards —they are extremely efficient and he is so proud, although it is unnerving for their leader to not be Nabooru. He loves his people instantly and deeply, but he longs for familiar faces. He looks into house and house, shop and shop, just watching the Gerudo go about their daily lives.

They look happier than he ever remembers.

Perhaps… has another boy been born to rule them? One born every century, of course, but rarely does one King live to meet another. He is not jealous or angry; he is simply curious to see if another King ruled their people better than he did.

He turns towards the steps leading up to the house of the ruler. Ganondorf finds Zelda smiling and watching a lost-looking Goron. He had not noticed her disappearance from his side.

“You know of Gorons, but not Gerudo?” he asks, a tinge of disgust in his tone. Ganondorf has never liked those proud Gorons.

Her smile is soft, like she’s greeting an old friend. “Yes, I… let’s just say I have a long history with Gorons. They are some of the most loyal friends I have ever had!”

Ganondorf snorts, disgruntled. They watch the Goron go in circles for a short while. Is it even a woman? “I don’t know how anyone can tell its gender,” he says, watching it closely. “How do they even reproduce?”

“They’re very efficient about the reproduction process,” Zelda says sagely and when he looks at her he finds a grin bitten back and mirth-filled sparkling eyes.

He doesn’t want to know.

Instead he turns and begins a slow march up the stairs. Zelda follows him. This feels important. Seeing another King… He ascends with caution, bated breath, anticipation building in his chest. Ganondorf has not known excitement in a long time.

When he passes the guards to enter the royal house, he stops dead in shock.

That’s _his_ chair.

And the King is a tiny girl. She looks strong, with a proud jaw and gleaming green eyes. Still very tiny, smaller than the Gerudo usually are, and the King’s chair has been adjusted to account for that fact. There are wooden steps leading up to it and a tiny chair set inside the chair, for the tiny King. He easily sat in the stone chair unaided.

To find something so familiar and yet so unexpected brings tears to his eyes involuntarily.

“Oh, she’s so beautiful…” Zelda says, mouth hanging open.

Yes. She is, Ganondorf agrees internally. That crown, too. What is this King’s name?

“Oh, she’s gone!”

“What?” Ganondorf snaps back to reality.

Zelda is looking behind them, at the stairs up to the second level. “There was a ghost,” she says absently, a little star-struck. “The ghost of a Gerudo girl… she went upstairs and motioned to follow her.”

They exchange looks. By some kind of unspoken agreement, they both move to go upstairs and follow this ghost.

Upstairs is only a short staircase away. The ghost is easy to find – she has flung herself upon the (appropriately tiny) bed of the King, audibly sobbing in despair. Ganondorf notes the sand seal plushies with a raised eyebrow.

“No!” the ghost cries as they approach. “My dear Princess! Come no further! I cannot bear to see you like this.”

What.

Ganondorf glances at Zelda. This is on her. For some reason, this Gerudo warrior (perhaps a previous King) has mistaken Zelda for… Zelda. An easy mistake, he supposes. It is nice to receive confirmation that this Hyrule does have a monarchy and a Princess. (And if there is a monarchy, there will be a Triforce.)

“I am not your Zelda,” she calls out softly. The desert sun backlights her golden hair; she looks as if she has a halo. “I am not a Princess. Your Zelda is not dead.”

The ghost sits up and looks over her shoulder. “Truly?” she asks.

“Yes,” Zelda answers, like a goddess incarnate, ready to grant the wishes of her people.

The ghost rises and stumbles over to them before dropping to her knees in front of Zelda. “Oh…” she gasps. “You have white clothes and yellow hair, just like my Princess when I saw her last. But her eyes are green and yours are blue.”

Zelda offers out her hands, smiling gently. “What is your name?”

“My name is Urbosa, my dear lady,” and the warrior takes Zelda’s hands and bends her head to press kisses to them.

Ganondorf had not realised that ghosts could _touch_ each other.

Impulsively, Ganondorf reaches out and touches Zelda. Instead of his hand going right through, his hand meets her arm. Skin to skin. Zelda looks down at that and then back up at him, eyes wide. She is warm to the touch. There is a hot heat in his belly. How easy it would be, to hold those thin wrists down and slide into her. To move inside her, hot and wet as she would be, and listen to her voice pleading his name.

To have her look at him like she looked at the boy; full of wondrous longing.

Then he abruptly lets go. He is not some horny young boy; he is over a century old and she is in love with someone else. He is mildly internally horrified – the first two versions of her he met as _children_ , for Din’s sake. Just because he has met this one as an adult – and yes, she is extraordinarily beautiful, but that is not the point – does not change the fact that she is a Zelda. He should be thinking of ways to overthrow her power, not ways to have sex with her.

As usual, none of his rational thoughts change how much he wants it.

While Ganondorf is having this mind-breaking realisation, Urbosa’s expression turns from scrutiny to scorn. She stands up and flings an arm out in front of the princess, as if to protect her. (As if anyone could protect anyone from Ganondorf Dragmire.)

“I know who you are!” she cries out darkly. “Beast! Calamity! Stay away from the Princess!”

“What?”

Urbosa points a finger at him. “You are no Gerudo,” she says nastily and that actually does hurt a little. “You are no person. We threw away any loyalty to you long ago _, Ganon_!”

“I am Ganon _dorf_ , not Ganon,” he says drily.

“I don’t care! What you have done to us… what you have done to Hyrule… it is unforgivable! Your actions have led to my death. You _killed_ me!”

“I think you might be mistaking me for someone else. I certainly have no recollection of that.”

Urbosa gives a scream of anger. “Mistaking!? There is only one Gerudo boy born every century – we all know who you are, Ganondorf Dragmire! The legends curse your name, King of the Desert Thieves!”

He glares at her. “We were _proud_ to be thieves,” he says curtly. “And I died underneath an ocean, with the Master Sword in my head – I did not die as the beast.”

That cuts Urbosa short and for a long moment silence reigns. They all stare at each other, Zelda, Urbosa and Ganondorf.

“I think there might be a miscommunication here,” Zelda says quietly.

…

Urbosa explains it like this:

Ten thousand years ago, there was a thief who became a beast, but the Princess and her chosen Hero stopped him.

(Ten thousand years… and he thought a century and a half was old.)

Ever since then, the Princess and the Hero have been reborn. The Beast is never reborn, but is immortal and so every ‘death’ does not keep him back. The beast bears the Triforce of Power. So every time he returns, he is more beast-like, less human, but never less cunning. Every time, the Princess and the Hero defeat him again, with the combination of Wisdom and Courage. The odds are stacked against this ancient evil.

(He is not evil.)

One hundred years ago, the Beast returned, and the Princess and Hero disappeared, and all their allies fell in battle.

(Disappearance does not mean defeat; Sheik was the first one to teach him that.)

So the cloud over the empty castle is not some nameless evil: it is him, it is Ganon. Yet for some reason, the Calamity cannot leave the castle.

(Ganondorf is not at all surprised. In his youth he mistook Hyrule for the castle too.)

…

“Do not go with him,” Urbosa begs. “My lady, please. All he will do you is harm.”

Zelda folds her hands. “If you knew who I truly was, you would know that I have nothing to fear,” she assures Urbosa. “When your Zelda returns, she will tell you who I am.”

Ganondorf is not remotely assured upon hearing that. (Although a small part of him is thankful to Din that Zelda has not realised he wants to have sex with her six ways from Sunday.)

Urbosa still looks unhappy. Zelda kisses her hands. “Listen to me, Urbosa. You will not linger here in pain for much longer.” She grins and it is like the sunlight spilling across green fields. “Link has returned. He is not truly dead. And he will save you all. As he always does and always will.”

He did not save you, Ganondorf thinks to himself.

They go, anyway. Gerudo Town has been spoilt for Ganondorf for the meantime. He does not think he will be able to look at it without ‘ _You are no Gerudo’_ and the memory of Nabooru ringing in his head for a long, long while.

…

They walk through the desert and back up into Hyrule’s green fields. It takes many hours and the sun passes overhead several times, but neither of them speak for all that time. Ghosts do not tire. (He wishes his mind could stop trying to examine other ways that endless stamina could be used.)

There is much for him to dwell upon.

The fact that he has been a beast for ten thousand years in this world. Maybe this is how it is; some dumb hero unlocks the seal by pulling the Master Sword, and out comes a beast instead of a man. The cycle begins again. Conquering an empty castle, just to be slayed, just to be reborn. His head hurts. If that is so, how does Zelda not know of him? And how did the ocean recede?

Trying to work out a steady timeline is going to do his head in.

If he remembers what has happened in this world, he resolves, he will refuse to awaken to be a beast again. No more. He is fine simply being Ganondorf.

He misses Twinrova. His mothers always had good advice to give him.

There is nothing he can do here anyway. It is not like he can tell himself to stop. They must remain here until Zelda has no more ‘calls’ left (she has been called away a good number of times already) and then return to that sky-prison. He cannot affect this future.

He glances at Zelda and wonders what she is thinking of. Her face is unreadable again. Why did she come with him? She knows he is her enemy now, and her Hero is dead and cannot protect her.

But then again, they are both dead too. What harm can they do to each other?

Zelda is the first to break the silence.

“What did you mean,” she asks. “when you said you died underneath an ocean?”

Ganondorf laughs, the memory of defeat bitter in his mouth. “It was the fault of the goddesses,” he says angrily. “I was within grasp of having Hyrule once, so they flooded it with water and turned it into an endless ocean.” He spits out the words, the loss still painful after all these years. “Then I was within a hair’s grasp of reuniting the Triforce and then that old man got to it first… and wished upon it to flood Hyrule away.”

He recounts the story, fuming. No greater losses has he suffered than losing Hyrule to the tide, twice.

When his story is met with silence, he turns, confused.

He finds Zelda a few steps back, swaying on her feet. She has gone sheet-white, a hand raised to her mouth. She looks utterly sick.

“Zelda, what’s wrong?” he asks sharply. (This is the first time he has used her name.)

“Hyrule is gone?” she says breathlessly.

It is a viciously good feeling to find another person as cut up about losing Hyrule as him. “Yes,” he nods, jaw clenched.

Zelda collapses to sit on the ground. She stares at her hands folded in her lap, blank-faced. Her legs stretch out in front of her like a doll’s. “Hyrule,” she groans, bringing her hands up to cover her face. “ _Gone_.”

Ganondorf is taken back by the anger in her eyes when she drops her hands again. Anger directed at _him_. “If you had not wanted Hyrule for yourself,” she hisses. “The Goddesses would not have flooded it! You foolish man!”

He takes a step back. He had not known Zelda could be angry. “Hyrule should not be selfishly kept to only the Hylians,” he snaps back. “The Gerudo deserve it too.”

A dark, terrible look crosses Zelda’s face. “Hyrule is _mine_!” she says, savage and vicious and the echo of her words seems to spiral out into the resulting silence.

Ganondorf stares at her.

So she knows what Hyrule is, and treasures it. Yet her people ride birds and she said she came from the skies, not from Hyrule. She lays claim to Hyrule, despite rejecting being a Princess.

She knows who he is now. But he is beginning to realise that he truly has no idea who _she_ is.

“If it helps,” he says quietly. “It is clear that the oceans have receded, if this Hyrule is ten thousand years older than my own.”

Zelda sighs. She drops her face into her hands once more. “I guess that is something,” she murmurs.

He looks away, as if to give her some privacy. When he discovered Hyrule was gone, he wept and raged for weeks at the edge of the water. The thought comes to him then, as though his subconscious had been turning it over even though he is determined not to think about it, is that he is going to have to deal with this new-found desire. Either list the millions of ways it Would Not Work and is a Truly Bad Idea, or just ask her and be turned down and be done with it. Repression is not the mature way to deal with irrational emotions.

He shoves the voice back down and says No.

Zelda jumps to her feet. “Well,” she says, suddenly (forcedly) cheerful. “We’ve seen your people.”

“…yes.”

“So now it’s time to see _my_ people!”

…

Not the Sheikah. Anyone but the Sheikah. Who is he kidding himself, of course it’s the Sheikah. They have been the protectors of the Hyrulean Royal Family since before history began. It was Impa who hid the Princess the first time around. It was Sheik who was his downfall. Did the oceans wipe them and all their history away?

It is a sobering thought, as they arrive at Kakariko. Even without the Sheikah, the Princess is still hidden away and protected. Like the Princess of this world; he expects to find her here, able to see her other self and ready to tell the truth.

The Sheikah here seem to have forgotten technology. They are a far cry from the Sheikah he knew back when he was young. Impa was a fierce warrior and he did not underestimate her after she rode off with the Princess on that stormy day.

He leaves Zelda to wander around the cosy village on her own. His attention has been drawn away by something else. Ganondorf climbs the hill to look above the village. He would have stolen the apples from the tree there if he had been alive, but his hands pass right through.

The lump has caught his attention. One of the many that they passed – had Zelda briefly referred to them as shrines? – but now it was glowing bright blue instead of orange. The bars across it had opened, too. Ganondorf floats inside, but nothing happens. It is a tiny dark room with a strange pattern on the floor and nothing else left inside.

Perhaps it held treasure inside, great weapons, and has been looted…?

He goes back outside and sits staring at the shrine, legs crossed underneath him. He strokes his red beard. The biggest mystery walks by his side, but this world is filled to the brim with other questions. Mysteries that are not his place to solve, questions he will never know the answer to. It doesn’t stop him from wondering. Who made these? How long have they been here?

Two Sheikah children run up the hill, laughing, shrieking something about hiding from mommy. He ignores them.

“Hey mister, mister, help us hide!”

Strange. He hadn’t seen an adult come up here. Then again, Sheikah.

Ganondorf glances up, and finds the two children looking fearlessly right at him.

Sheikah indeed. With their Sheikah damned eyes.

Din damn them.

“You can see me.” It is more of a weary statement than a question.

“Mister ghost, mister ghost, come play with us,” they whine and yell.

It is a testament to how the Sheikah raise their children that they play with a ghost despite not knowing who he is. If they knew he was the Calamity Ganon (in another lifetime), would they have approached him? He thinks of Kakariko Village being built over the Shadow Temple. Perhaps it wouldn’t have changed anything.

So, that is how the Great King of Evil, Ganondorf Dragmire, plays hide and seek in the woods with two Sheikah children for an hour. He swears them to secrecy. No one shall ever know that he did this.

Somehow tired despite being a ghost, Ganondorf walks back down to the village. The eyes of the Sheikah villagers flicker to him and then flicker away. Do they recognise him? Or is that simply what they do for all ghosts? Your society must be warped in some way if you can see all your dead relatives. No wonder they have given up their technology.

Zelda comes out to meet him; she is practically dancing for joy. She beams with happiness as she pushes at him and insists they go back up the mountain, it’s not a good idea for him to go in there.

So they go back up the hill, and sit under the apple tree with their legs dangling off a cliff. Zelda is humming under her breath, still smiling from ear to ear. Ganondorf takes a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye from time to time. What has made her so happy?

Perhaps she has found the other Zelda. He deliberates for a moment or two about asking, but Zelda beats him to it.

“It was her, you know,” she says, tracing circles in the dusty ground.

“What?”

“Impa,” she clarifies, to his confusion. “It was supposed to be her.”

Ganondorf raises an eyebrow at Zelda. Mysteries upon mysteries. “For what?”

“It was meant to be her who bears the Triforce of Power,” Zelda explains. “Impa and Link, my two protectors. Together we three would all protect the Triforce from evil.” She says it like an apology.

Ganondorf stares at her. There is a sudden rushing in his ears. _Of course_ he was not supposed or meant to have anything. Destiny could not possibly play such a trick as to award him the Triforce of Power for free. Everything that he has gained he had to steal, meanwhile the Princess has been given everything on a silver platter.

The fact that she would apologise for him not being destined to anything makes him furious.

His fury is cut short by a short melodic tune behind them.

They turn. There is a blue shining light appearing from the shrine and then suddenly… out of it emerges the last person Ganondorf expected to see now.

Brown hair and blue eyes and no longer mismatched clothes. The silent Hero. Link.

He must not have expected to see them either by the way his eyes go wide. Instead, he makes signs with his hands that Ganondorf cannot read (Zelda gasps), jabs at a plate in his hands and disappears again, in the same burst of blue light and soft sound.

Ganondorf rounds on Zelda. “What did he say,” he demands.

Zelda’s pink mouth is open, eyes wide, staring after her disappeared Hero. _(‘I am’_ rings in his head.) After a moment, she swallows and shakes her head as if to right herself. “He said,” she says quietly, as if finding it hard to say the words, “to meet him by the Lover’s Pond, as soon as we can.”

The Lover’s Pond.

Well. That obviously counts Ganondorf out.

It’s not like the brat can ravish a ghost in a clandestine meeting, he thinks to himself, annoyed at himself and Zelda and Link and Impa and everyone.

A century ago, he would have stormed out and that would have been the end of it, all bridges burned. But time had given him patience. His anger withers and dies in the face of the fruitlessness of it all, the weary years weighing on him. Will being angry bring him any closer to the Triforce? No. And he has already acknowledged how ridiculous it is to pine so much over an enemy. Over such base feelings.

“Never mind,” he says, tired. “Did you find the other Zelda?”

This Zelda looks at him bewildered and he knows he has misjudged something again.

Impa and Link, her two protectors. So Impa is part of the reincarnation process? Perhaps even if her Hero is dead, she still has Impa somewhere, searching for her. A person cannot stay in the spirit realm forever, right? What does this clue _mean_?

“Why in the skies would the poor girl be in Kakariko?” Zelda’s voice is puzzled.

“So you know where she is?”

“Why do you want to know?” Zelda fires back.

They stare each other down. Her rounded face is determined.

Ganondorf is not willing to reveal himself just yet. So after the silence has gone on long enough, he drops his eyes ( _like he had when kneeling before the King of Hyrule_ ) and says to her lowly, “So are we going to the Lover’s Pool or not?”

…

This is what they say on the road to the Lover’s Pool:

“The Sheikah worshipped me.”

“What?”

“It’s true. I am their precious Zelda and they worshipped me, their goddess. I would never go anywhere without a Sheikah by my side. Hundreds of them sacrificed themselves by mummification just to protect my future self.”

“Are you trying to make a comparison to my sisters? If so, you’re wrong. They were my sisters, not my slaves.”

“…”

“Well. Maybe I was akin to a god, towards the end.”

“Is that what you want? To have the power of a god? To be a Demon King?”

“…No. That’s what my enemies would say of me. What I want is Hyrule.”

“…Why?”

“When I was a youth, I could see the winds blowing in from Hyrule. That green and fair land. I coveted that wind, I suppose. I wanted more than anything else to have its beauty and life for myself and my people. But destiny intervened against me. The gods have never been fair. No, I would not want to be an unfair god.”

“The Goddesses do not understand mortal love.”

“I know that well enough.”

“Ganondorf…”

And the rest is silence.

…

It is most likely that Link wants them all to meet at the Lover’s Pool for how gorgeous it is rather than any intentions he might have. Ganondorf can admit that. By the time they make their way there, it is sunset and the world is lit up in soft orange and baby-blue.

It is a lovely place. Colourful flowers dot the tall green grass, sheltering a shell-navy pool. It is curved into a natural heart on the top of the mountain. Ganondorf leans over, but his reflection does not appear staring back at him. The viewpoint is fantastic: the wide open ocean, the endless sky. Or it would be fantastic, if he was not Ganondorf. The salt on the wind makes him sick to his stomach.

The Hero is lying in the grass, eyes closed, chest rising up and down. It takes a second for it to sink in that Ganondorf is watching the brat of destiny sleep. Huh. He looks so young, so fragile. His face is so soft. He does not look like the unstoppable murder machine that Ganondorf knows the pawn of the Princess is.

An old wariness has crept back over him. Even being dead, he resents being alone with the Hero and the Princess. The last time this had happened, they had cut a Master Sword into his head and left him at the bottom of the ocean.

Right from the very beginning, kneeling in that castle hall and glimpsing the glares of two children in the garden, the three of them being together spelled nothing but negative consequences for him. The odds are stacked against him.

“Link, wake up,” Zelda says. Her voice is warm and soaked with emotion.

The Hero does. They watch together as his eyes flutter open and then he’s awake, just like it. Link sits up and stares at them emotionlessly, blank-faced. Ganondorf and Zelda sit across from him in the grass.

Ganondorf has not spent much time with any Hero that does not result in drawing of swords. Perhaps he has lived long enough to recognise the gaze of Zelda, but the sea-blue of this boy’s eyes is unfamiliar territory to him.

Why does this boy continue to be the Princess’ pawn? Why does he go to the ends of the earth and sea and sky on her command? Why does he travel through time, through space, beat impossible odds just to be in her presence?

Who has been calling Zelda from the edge of time?

‘ _I am’_ rings in his head and it occurs to him that this works two ways.

Oh, Din. The boy never says anything and he barely knows her, but he loves her anyway, doesn’t he? Just by the pure fact that she is the Princess and he is the Hero. (What happened to place this curse? Who were the first Zelda and Link?)

Perhaps he should spend more time with the Hero next time they meet (there will always be a next time). If he has had this many realisations just looking into the boy’s eyes, what will happen if he actually tries to get the boy to speak?

Link raises his hands and begins to sign something. Ganondorf turns to Zelda. Her sky-blue eyes follow his hands easily, mouthing words to herself.

“Yes, we are Zelda and Ganondorf,” Zelda answers his silent question.

“…”

“No, not Calamity Ganon – Ganon _dorf_.”

“…”

“I’m sorry! I’m afraid I’m not the Zelda you’re looking for. Haven’t you met her?”

“…”

“Oh, Hylia, no…”

Ganondorf frowns. That’s a strange word on Zelda’s tongue. He doesn’t recognise it, but it sounds like the name of some goddess. Perhaps it’s a Hylian thing. That would make sense.

“… …”

“That’s so… I am so sorry. I truly, truly am. You don’t remember anything, and everyone you love is dead… is it Zelda’s fault? My fault?”

“… … …”

“Oh, I see… No, we’re from, ah, another time. But is your Princess _really_ waiting in the castle? _Hyrule_ Castle? Not another castle?” (There is something odd to the way she stresses those words loudly.)

Ganondorf’s heart leaps into his throat. His last chance at the Triforce – inside the empty castle?

“…”

“Ah, I see, I see. So she _is_ in the castle.”

Why has not Ganon snatched the Triforce yet then?

“…”

“Yes, go ahead.”

Would it be that hard?

“… … …”

Zelda turns white. It’s worse than when he had accidentally revealed to her the fate of Hyrule. She puts a hand to her mouth, swaying. It’s so bad that she leans back into him and Ganondorf places an arm around her shoulders, on the edge of concern. What did the Hero say?

Link says nothing. His eyes flicker from Zelda’s face to Ganondorf’s face back to Zelda. He watches her expectantly.

“It’s true,” she whispers, at long last. “You’re right about me.”

 _What_ is he right about?!

“… … …”

“…I see,” she faintly says.

Link stands up. It is night now and the sky is purple-navy and fireflies are buzzing near the pond’s surface. He crosses the distance between them in a few steps. It feels all wrong for them all to be so close to each other. The Hero, the Princess, the Beast, all within breathing space of each other. Zelda whimpers in Ganondorf’s loose grasp.

Link reaches for Ganondorf first. He reaches for Ganondorf’s other hand, hanging by his side.

The Hero touches him. Like he’s solid flesh.

Ganondorf almost instinctively pulls away. Zelda lets out a shuddering gasp in his arms.

Link takes his hand and the Hero’s hands are small compared to his own. He raises Ganondorf’s hand to his mouth and he presses a kiss to it. His mouth is warm and his sea-blue eyes are dead-set on Ganondorf. There is a hot heat inside Ganondorf.

Then, while holding Ganondorf’s hand in one of his own, Link turns to Zelda. Slowly, deliberately, he takes her hand in his and presses a warm kiss to her skin. Zelda leans against Ganondorf and whines. Link places a finger to his lips and then presses the finger against her lips.

Then he stands up and he goes, taking his living warmth with him. Both of them watch him with wondrous longing.

When he is long gone, they are both still sat there unheeding. Then Zelda scrambles around in his arms, tugs Ganondorf down and kisses him hotly. Her mouth is warm. These two might be the first warmth he’s had in a long, long time. There is a humming power under her skin.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ganondorf says, pulling away. “I’m too old for you. I’ve tried to kill two versions of you, at least. _And_ you’re in love with someone else.”

“Is that a no?”

“No,” he admits.

Zelda kisses him again and he bites her lips red. “You don’t have to be in love with someone to have sex with them,” she whispers into his mouth. And she leads him down into the grass. The Lover’s Pond, indeed.

…

“I’m going to the Spring of Power,” Zelda tells him, afterwards. “I will be called there anyway.”

She pauses for a moment, unsmiling, staring at the flowers in the grass. Ganondorf watches her, watches the way the sun shines on her golden hair. He isn’t growing sentimental; it’s just a fact that it’s eye-catching. They both know better than to think this has actually changed anything between them. (Zelda is, of course, still in love with Link.)

“If you want, you can come with me,” she says finally, cautiously.

Ganondorf shrugs, one heavy lift and fall of his shoulders. “I don’t want to.”

That takes Zelda back in surprise. Then realisation settles into her face. “You’re going to the castle…? You won’t, ah. You won’t find anything there that will please you.” Her words have an edge of warning to them, but her eyes look so sad.

“Can I ask you a question, Zelda?”

She eyes him like an enemy and then nods.

“When was the last time you were called to this land? And by whom?”

Her lips quirk into a small smile. “That’s two questions, Ganondorf.”

Ganondorf still does not have enough information.

She rejects being a Princess, yet claims Hyrule as her own. She came from the skies. The Sheikah worshipped her. Her Hero is dead. She is still in love with him. She has never heard of the Gerudo. She knew who was supposed to bear the Triforce of Power, but that must have been before he laid hands on it. She did not know that the oceans covered Hyrule. She has met a mythical Princess from Hyrule’s beginning. She knew from the beginning that this land’s Princess waited in Hyrule Castle. She is called from the edge of time by the Hero. She has been trapped in the sky prison for a long, long time.

What is the solution to this? This Zelda is no ordinary Zelda. But finding out her secrets won’t bring him any closer to getting his Triforce back. Or…

“Fine.” Zelda closes her eyes in the silence. “One hundred years ago, and by Princess Zelda.”

There is a question he should have asked from the beginning. If the Princess and the Hero are trapped in an eternal reincarnation cycle (no matter how it happened), how can her spirit remain in the spirit world? Should it not pass on to the next Zelda? What calls her to this land, when there is another Princess here?

There is one conclusion he can make. Some parts of what she has said must have been lies.

If everything is true, then they do not possibly match up with anything he understands.

“One last question.”

“You’re a curious man, aren’t you?”

“What did the boy say to you that made you react so?”

Here are the lies: coming from the skies. Not knowing of the Gerudo. Not being a Princess. Having blue eyes.

Zelda looks away, smiling. A ghostly flower appears in her slender hand and she places it behind her ear. The waxy petals are blue at the centre, then fade to white at the edges. A silent princess. She gazes out over the ocean and sky.

“He guessed my true identity correctly.”

If the boy managed to figure it out so quickly, Ganondorf thinks sourly, and he still isn’t right about his conclusion, then Ganondorf must the biggest idiot in this timeline. He watches her, eyes travelling over her clothes. Why does she wear all white? Why is there not a single symbol of the Royal Family, or even Hyrule, on her clothing? Why does she look like a maiden about to be sacrificed to some demon king? (Perhaps she already has been.)

“I have some suspicion as to who you are,” he says eventually. He rises, drawing his dark robes around him. “I am going to go and confirm it. In the castle.”

Zelda gazes at him now and then nods once. A silent acceptance with the bow of that golden head. Her eyes are clear. She doesn’t cry, but she has no reason to. “I won’t stop you,” she says quietly. “Goodbye, Ganondorf. You can find me at the Spring of Power.”

“I will see you later, Zelda.”

The last glimpse he has of her, as he turns his head one last time, is of this. A girl in shining white, her hair as yellow as buttercups. She is faded. A ghost sitting among the flowers and they contain more life than her.

So they part – amicably, but perhaps for the last time like that.

…

Ganondorf is interrupted on his way to Hyrule Castle. That empty, lovely castle. He does not miss the madness of his younger self, stalking those halls and screaming, but he misses sitting on the throne. Perhaps he has not learned from his mistakes as much as he thought he had. (Who is he kidding – his goal has never changed. He will not give up on it. Ganondorf does not learn from his mistakes.)

The strange octopus robots litter the land as he walks towards Hyrule Castle. At last he comes to a grove with a grave aura. It opens out into a pond with stone walkways set into the murky water. The sky is clouded with purple-navy and lightning flashes on the mountains in the distance. A dark day.

There is an old man standing at the centre of the ruins.

Ganondorf halts, air stopping in his chest, anger replacing it instantly.

He knows this man. This cursed, foolish bastard. The man who took everything from him simply because he didn’t want to lose. The king who threw over the chessboard rather than suffer defeat. The king who killed his kingdom.

“DAPHNES!” he roars.

The king turns. Ganondorf has been about to rush forward in rage – and finds himself stumbling at that face. They look so very, very similar and yet. Ganondorf has carved the details of Daphnes’ face into his mind out of pure revenge. This man looks eerily akin to him, but he is not Daphnes.

The man, however, appears to recognise him. The proud and haughty glare he would have expected from Daphnes is undershot by the grief in this king’s eyes. By the misery in the downturn of his mouth.

“I know who you are,” the man says slowly in his lilting Hyrulean accent. “But you do not know who I am.”

Ganondorf glares at him with challenge in his orange eyes. “Who _am_ I then, o wise king?”

The man regards him with patience. “Even the Calamity was a man once.”

“Fine.” Ganondorf grins. He can admit that he is a monster if that is what his enemies believe him to be. “But you haven’t denied being another foolish King of Hyrule. Did your actions result in the death of your kingdom _again_? This is why the only King Hyrule should have is me.”

“My name is Rhoam,” the man replies. “And for the last hundred years, you _have_ been the King of Hyrule. For all the good you have done it.”

He spreads his hands, turning to gesture towards what is behind him. Far in front of them, Ganondorf can sight the ruins of Castle Town. A crumbled wreck of the lively, bustling place it was once. Now it spelled only death and despair for travellers who entered it. A far cry from the fair place Hyrule had been.

“Why can the beast not leave the castle?” Ganondorf wishes for his swords. “Then it would rule Hyrule absolutely.”

“Divine blood,” Rhoam murmurs, lost in memories as he stares up at the shadow of the castle. “Divine blood only… O evil king. Do you really know what happened a hundred years ago?”

Ganondorf doesn’t reply. He scowls in silence instead. He has come here to confirm his ideas and he will not stand for being wrong prematurely.

Rhoam turns to him. He looks so aged, like a king out of a myth. Did he sacrifice his daughter? Did he send her to the castle to be turned to stone? When Link went to sleep for a hundred years (for Ganondorf is well acquainted with sleeping heroes), did he let his daughter be trapped even if it would not save his kingdom?

“The Triforce is not in the castle, evil beast.” That is Rhoam’s warning. “It is long gone. The gods have abandoned us.”

(--he had jaws of death and blood and the flames were rising high in the kingdom. They could not keep him out. They would not keep him out. The Hero has not appeared and Hyrule is his.

The king, standing in his hall, blank-faced with horror even as he knows what he must do. The sages on the ground, pleading to the gods for deliverance and their King looks into the orange eyes of the Beast.

“The gods have abandoned us,” he says like a prayer --)

Ganondorf scoffs. “I know where the Triforce is,” he says recklessly. “There can only be one Zelda at a time.”

The king regards him wearily. Go on, say his eyes.

“When I go to that castle,” Ganondorf’s voice is dark and low and full of promise. “I will find a Princess turned to stone. An empty body, with the Triforce locked into her skin. Did you have your sages make a seal, with her the lock? A trapped soul, lost in the spirit realm. The Triforce belongs to her. Only in freeing her can the Triforce be found again.”

His Zelda is the lost Princess of this land. The real trapped Princess and that is why she loves Link and why she is called to this land and why she has not been freed. The Urbosa warrior is clearly in love with her. She hid the truth from him with lies because she knows where the Triforce is and she knows that he wants it. _Ganon_ dorf Dragmire. The clue is in the name. She knew who he was from the very beginning.

Zelda possesses the Triforce and that is why he felt humming power under her ghostly skin when he touched her.

The king’s gaze has turned to pity.

Ganondorf does not know why, and it incenses him.

The king turns away. “She went on her own,” and there is exhaustion in his voice. “She went to face the Calamity Ganon on her own, after all hope had been lost. All light and life extinguished. I was dead and I could not stop her going, but even as I screamed out to her she did not hear me. I did not realise I was dead.”

(“ _Hope! I desire hope for these children! Give them a future_!”)

(When he had turned around that last time, swords ready and aching for blood, the glares on the soft faces of the children had been the same glares he had seen in another lifetime, out the castle window. In their eyes there gleamed the flame that could not expire: hope.)

“The Princess and the Hero always have hope.”

“In what?” the king asks.

“In each other.”

Ganondorf leaves the king standing there as the dark-clothed man continues on to the dark castle. He has nothing to fear from the castle: therein, he shall discover only himself. When he returns Zelda to her flesh-and-blood body, the Triforce shall come into the world once more.

He relishes the fight ahead. Zelda and Link shall be his enemies once more, but there shall be two of him for them to contend with.

(Of course he would be her enemy once more, if she held the way to the Triforce. Having sex doesn’t change any of that.)

…

The castle is disturbing. It reminds him so much of his own empty castle, so long ago, except this one relies on technology instead of magic. Ganondorf is scornful at that. What kind of sorcerer has the beast become? One that cannot even cast spells? What a distasteful future.

He stops outside the drawbridge, for just a moment.

It was here, in another lifetime, that whatever remained of his destiny was set in stone. Ganondorf resents the gods for snatching his well-earned victories away from him at the last moments. But even he can agree that they have made him into their perfect villain.

It does not matter if he stands here and broods. There is no one to watch him anyway.

In pursuit of the Triforce, he has lost his sisters, lost his kingdom, lost even the piece he had held. What more does he have to lose?

Ganondorf chuckles to himself. Right by this drawbridge. He cannot believe he actually asked the boy for directions. He would not have been able to answer anyway, but Ganondorf had mistaken his silence for defiance. Well. He had been defiant anyway.

A question lingers in his mind. Why does the boy follow her anyway?

It is a question, like many in this strange Hyrule, which he has no answers for.

Ganondorf heads into the crumbling, ruined castle.

Odd events occur as he walks the abandoned hallways. The malice responds to his presence, oozing and groaning and moaning. What robots there are fire their lasers into thin air, startling the moblins and lizalfos. The environment does not and cannot respond to him – he is a ghost, after all. (He is saddened for it; in life his sorcery was great and he could affect anything.) But it tries.

He passes through the library (a shame that the books have gone to waste), a wrecked dining hall. Weapons litter the corridors, as if brave souls have tried to tackle this dungeon and all failed. This castle is not the exact same castle that he knew, but he is adept at finding his way. He journeys upwards, towards the Sanctum.

It must have been beautiful, once.

Gorgeous stone architecture. High, open windows that lets the setting sun is, spreading light all over the room. The crest of the Royal Family. Faded red banners flickering in the breeze. The image of the Triforce, casting its shadow over everything.

If not for the monstrosity on the ceiling.

Ganondorf feels sick to his stomach, mouth burning with acid. He expected a pig! A beast! Solid flesh and blood! Instead he has found a sickness, a parasite. A red-black-pink cocoon pulses on the ceiling, its tendrils reaching out down the walls. A cocoon for spiders, for deformed creatures in need of healing.

It isn’t remotely human.

Is this what he becomes? Is this what he loses next? Is this what will happen if he continues to pursue the Triforce?

 _Anything,_ he would have said once. I would give up anything for the sake of the Triforce. He had died twice for it. But this?

This is not life. This is not power. This is not what a worthy ruler looks like.

Reeling from the view, he stumbles back.

I KNOW YOU says a voice inside his head. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

_Oh Din. Another surprise._

Ganondorf is well versed in telepathy, but he cannot identify the owner of the voice. It has no voice with which to speak. Is it the monster?

YOU WANT POWER…

True, he admits. Power has become part of his identity.

YOU WANT TO REMAKE HYRULE IN YOUR IMAGE…

He just wants it _back_. And preferably his.

YOU WISH TO BECOME A GOD… BUT IN DOING SO… YOU WILL GIVE UP MORTALITY FOREVER

“If I do not become a, a _thing_ like this,” Ganondorf says aloud, staring in disgust at the ceiling, lips curled back. “As long I actually had the power of a god… what’s so bad about losing mortality? I would be a generous god. Not like the Golden Goddesses. I would be fair.”

THERE ARE NO FAIR GODS… THEY DO NOT LISTEN TO OUR PRAYERS… THEY ABANDON US IN OUR TIME OF NEED… ALL THAT IS FAIR AND JUST IS MORTAL… THEY ARE JEALOUS OF OUR MORTALITY… OF OUR LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER…

“Why are you preaching to me?” Ganondorf sneers. “Who _are_ you?”

HAVEN’T YOU FIGURED IT OUT?

YOU, TOO.

A sudden burst of white light. Ganondorf gasps, falling to his knees and clutching at his eyes. It sears and burns at him. Just like the sting of the Light Arrows and the bite of the Master Sword. He cannot breathe. When he manages to lift his head, it is to a sight he can scarcely believe.

She shines with light. It is a sight like no other he has ever seen. Light emanates from her like she is the sun. A maiden floats in front of him. He can make out some colours: her dress is white, her necklace gold, her eyes green. Her hair is a different shade of gold. He has to close his eyes against the sinking realisation.

This is Zelda, the lost Princess of Hyrule.

THE GODS HAVE ABANDONED US…

WE HAVE TO RELY ON OUR OWN WISDOM… AND COURAGE… AND POWER

“And what power do you have,” he asks weakly, “to hold back the Calamity Ganon? What power do you, little girl, have… to stand against a beast for one hundred years?”

(He was wrong. Okay.)

THE TRIFORCE IS GONE FROM THIS LAND…

His heart breaks.

THE ONLY POWER I HAVE IS THE GIFT OF THE GODDESS HYLIA… 

“ _Who?_!” Even so, the name rings a distant bell.

I AM RELYING ON HER SACRIFICE…

What has he missed?

WHEN SHE BECAME MORTAL… AND GAVE US THE DIVINE POWERS IN HER BLOODLINE… TO PROTECT HYRULE FOR ALL OF TIME…

A goddess who… became mortal?

EVEN IF I…

HAVE TO GIVE UP MY BODY AND BLOOD…

TO PROTECT HYRULE… I WILL!

Ganondorf cannot bear this light. It is slowly pushing him back, out of the Sanctum.

I WILL RELY ON THE PROMISE LINK GAVE ME…

He staggers, grasping at the doorway.

A THOUSAND LIFETIMES AGO… IN SKYLOFT…

_Oh._

HE WILL ALWAYS… COME TO SAVE ME… SO

The girl-goddess raises her hand, shining. BEGONE, DEMON KING!

And Ganondorf is kicked out the door.

…

Ganondorf had not realised that spirits could fall asleep or unconscious. Still, there is no other explanation for why he wakes up to find himself on the shore of Lake Hylia in the middle of the night. The air is clear and the stars twinkle down to be reflected in the dark waters. Had the Princess truly thrown him all this way…?

It is a long, cold walk to the Spring of Power. Ganondorf does not mind. He has much to think about.

First things first. He was wrong about everything.

Then again, he reasons, there is no possible way he could have known that the Hyrulean Royal Family are descended from a goddess. There is no way anyone could guess that. He needs to think. What was he told? How does it link in with everything else? What is the truth? Where is the Triforce? Din, he’s so confused. He just wants Hyrule and eternal power. Not this strange Hyrule where nothing is as it seems.

He needs to think over everything that has happened and re-evaluate it all. Damn it all to Din. His head feels cloudy and confused. He can’t think right.

Zelda, the lost Princess of Hyrule and the Zelda he knows are two different people.

Ganondorf was wrong about the Princess of Hyrule never taking a stance against him alone.

If the Triforce is in this land, only the Golden Goddesses know. And they are not telling, not even whispering it to their long-eared children.

This is the problem that tears at his heart. Ganondorf had believed that the Royal Family would know where the Triforce is hidden, because they always do. If even they do not know, then… he is at a loss. The Goddesses do not play divine pranks; they will not award him the Triforce of Power. And as a ghost, there is not much he can do anyway.

All he can do is… wait.

One day, in his Hyrule under the sea, someone will pull the Master Sword. They will always need the sword that seals the darkness. Someone will come, another misguided hero like the first, and the King of Evil shall be awoken again. When he is flesh and blood, he can set to finding the Triforce again, even if he has to steal his way into the Sacred Realm again.

There is an empty space inside him. He has given almost everything in pursuit of the Triforce. What can he do to fill the time?

Her, he supposes.

There is still the question of who Zelda really is. And he has tired of these silly games of who knows what. She knows who he is and she has stayed by his side. Ganondorf thinks he deserves to know who she is.

…

The Spring of Power is a place with remarkable beauty. He has to brush aside ivy to enter it. It is an overgrown stone shrine, lost long ago to the wild. There are trees growing inside and the sound of water running is soothing to his ears. The air is cool. Although the tunnel here is a tad cramped for him – it is clear that this is a shrine made for Hylians, not Gerudo kings.

Then, not so far away, Ganondorf hears the sound of someone crying.

He hurries up. Indeed, he finds Zelda, collapsed to the ground, her head in her hands. She is on the platform atop the stairs, an ancient statue in front of her. Her shoulders are shaking. As he approaches, her crying turns to sniffles.

“I… I do not have the Triforce,” she says thickly as he approaches the bottom of the stairs.

Ganondorf halts, completely confused. “That is not what I came here for,” he says honestly. He has no reason to lie.  

Zelda looks down at him over her shoulder. Her face is red, skin blotchy from tears. There is heartbreak in those blue eyes. “Then. Then what did you come back for?”

He stares at her. His sisters never cried. Oh Din. What does he do? “I wanted the company,” he says, honesty making his feelings into words. “And I am tired of attempting to figure out who you are.”

Zelda blinks, surprise taking the place of misery in her eyes. “You… you don’t know who I am?”

“I have tried and tried and I truly have no idea who you are.”

Zelda turns away, wiping her face on the edges of her long white sleeves. She is quiet.

Ganondorf takes the opportunity to ascend the stairs. In front of them is a dark pool, lilipads floating on the surface. It is not deep; looking into it, he estimates it would not even reach his waist. The statue unnerves him. The carved smile of the winged woman looks unreal, as if whoever the inspiration for it did not know how to smile.

“I miss him,” Zelda confesses into the silence. Ganondorf is taken aback. “I miss him so much. I can barely breathe because of it. I feel like my heart is torn in two.”

“…your Link?” Ganondorf cautiously ventures. The one who died.

Zelda nods, once.

Ganondorf looks up at the statue again. Time has worn away the fine details on the feathers of her wings. They look like burdens of stone now, weighing the unspecified woman down.

“I left him here.” Zelda reaches forward and traces a finger into the water. One would expect there to be ripples but of course, nothing happens. “He was here, he followed me and he found me. And I left him behind, without saying a word to him. I wish I had. I wish we had more time.”

She sighs, her chest rising and falling with the deep effort. Zelda leans back. “I would have kissed him sooner if I had known how little time we would have,” she says softly.

Ganondorf considers her. “What happened to him?”

“He died of old age,” she says, off hand. “As I did, too.”

Ganondorf stares at her.

Zelda looks over at him then, and a flicker of a smile happens at the corner of her mouth. “You really have no idea who I am?” she asks, fondly and incredulously.

Ganondorf can only mildly choke and think: _old age._ That makes no sense at all. She looks like a woman in her early twenties.

“I’ll show you, then,” Zelda says, tired. She lifts a hand and points to the decaying statue in front of them. “I’m _her_.”

“… …you’re a statue.”

Zelda laughs, bright into the cold air. “No, no. I’m not a statue. I am what that statue is depicting.” Her face is filled with longing. “I had magnificent boots once, and I flew through the air. But then, I also had my harp and my lovely sword.” She smiles down at her hands. “Now I am so _weak_.”

“I – I don’t understand what you’re saying, Zelda.”

She looks at him and her eyes are a thousand years old. “My true name is not Zelda,” she says gently. “As much as I want to simply be Zelda, I am not.”

Ganondorf frowns, staring. An… imposter…? This conversation is turning stranger by the minute. Of course she’s a Zelda; Hyrulean royalty is written in every curve of her body. “Who are you, then?”

“Have you…” Zelda bites her lips, struggling to find the words, “have you ever heard the name Hylia?”

Ganondorf shrugs. “I would say no, but the Princess in the castle spoke to me of her a few days ago. She was a goddess that became mortal, at the beginning of the royal line –“ Ganondorf stops short.

Din.

Din, Nayru and Farore.

Zelda smiles weakly. His mouth hangs open.

_(“Formerly of Skyloft, previously of the Land Below.”_

_“She was petrified by a wizard and turned to stone.”_

_“I was called here, through time and space.”_

_“We rode birds, where I come from.”_

_“This is all my fault.”_

_“I would know him anywhere.”_

_“I’ve never heard of them.”_

_“Let’s just say I have a long history with Gorons. They are some of the most loyal friends I have ever had.”_

_“I am not a Princess.”_

_“If you knew who I truly was, you would know that I have nothing to fear.”_

_“Hyrule is mine!”_

_“Together we three would all protect the Triforce from evil.”_

_“The Sheikah worshipped me.”_

_“The Goddesses do not understand mortal love.”_

_“You’re right about me.”)_

He slept with a goddess. A literal, non-metaphorical, incarnation of a goddess.

Ganondorf places his head in his hands. Everything snaps into perfect clarity. No wonder he kept on subconsciously comparing her appearance to that of a goddess. She literally is one. _He forgot all about the Gorons_. “Oh, Din,” he groans, muffled by his hands. “How was I ever supposed to guess that?”

“You’d be surprised,” Zelda says wryly. “Demons have a good nose for scenting out the blood of the goddess.”

Ganondorf glares at her. “I am no demon,” he snaps harshly. Thief, yes, beast, maybe, demon, no.

“Yes, I agree. I can see that now. But I wasn’t quite sure at the beginning, whether you were an enemy purely after the Triforce or after my body too.” She stops and then breaks out into a mischievous grin. “Well. You did want that. I wasn’t sure if you wanted my blood.”

“What the hell can anyone do with your _blood_?”

Zelda looks tired. “You’d be surprised. No more on that; I am not going to give you ideas.”

Ganondorf spreads out his hands. “But you’re a _ghost_ ,” he says helplessly.

“Not quite.” Zelda sighs. “My bloodline contains my divine power, which is why all the Zeldas after me have it. But my soul contains the essence of that power. What the Princess in the castle can do… I can do a thousand times over. And if my soul is… if it’s gone, then their power will fade away too.”

Ganondorf reaches out, impulsively, and takes Zelda’s hand. Her warm skin is humming with power. He stares down at her tiny hand in his, the way her bones look so fragile. He is holding the hand of a goddess. The thought should fill him with disgust, but it does not. For this particular Zelda, the very first Zelda, divinity seems right on her.

“I thought I would die,” she says in a small voice. “I was mortal. It seemed right. My children were beside me and Link was already gone… I wasn’t ready to go, but who _ever_ is? I did not want to leave the land of Hyrule. The green and fair fields. The wind.”

Ganondorf drops her hand as if it burns and draws away from her. He feels the exact same way about Hyrule and it makes him uncomfortable. He must not forget that this woman is his enemy. Even if he has to compete with a goddess and her descendants and her pawns, Hyrule _will_ be his one day.

He must not forget how he is the ultimate thief. The desert King who stole into the Sacred Realm and took the Triforce for his own. He was the bearer of Power for over a hundred years and the absence of it is an ache. He stole from the gods and fought against their set-in-stone results. He watched them drown Hyrule rather than let him win.

How much of a part has this Hylia had in ensuring that only her own people, the Hylians, receive all the benefits of Hyrule?

(The ego to name a people and land after yourself. He almost admires it.)

Perhaps she recognises the ambition in his eyes. “You want Hyrule, I know,” Zelda says. “But you are trapped here, too. There is nothing you can do in the meantime, Ganondorf Dragmire.”

“Trapped here?” he echoes cautiously.

She lifts her head and looks at the statue of herself. “I cannot die,” she says resignedly. “I was a goddess. And goddesses do not die.”

He is about to open his mouth to demand to know how much of fate she has personally twisted, when she lifts up her hands and wrings them together. “Let me explain, please.”

Ganondorf remains silent.

“I was a goddess,” her eyes are far away, “and I did not understand mortality. I did not understand love or anger or any warm emotion. The gods are the cold of space before the earth began. I was a different person, then. Sometimes it hurts my head to think about it. Who am I? Hylia or Zelda?”

In the settling gloom of night, her hair turns silver. The stars reflect in her eyes. “I made so many plans. I fought alongside the Gorons, the robots, the dragons… I fought the Demon King himself in an endless war. It all seems like something out of a fairy tale and yet it happened. But I only ensured the safety of my own people. And even that I could not do right – with what happened with the Guardians…”

Ganondorf has never heard that word before, but Zelda does not pause to explain.

“And with how many Sheikah I… oh, I don’t want to think about it. But the worst of all is what I did…” Here she abruptly stops.

She twists her hands together, looking down. “Let me rephrase. I gave up my divinity and was reborn as a human. My father named me Zelda… and so I was a mortal child. But the reason why I became mortal.” She covers her face. “I was so terrible, so selfish, so unfeeling,” she mumbles.

Ganondorf snorts. “It is hardly worse than all the actions I have ever taken.”

Zelda gives him a heavy look. Then she speaks slowly, with difficulty, as if confessing to a secret crime in the little hours of the night, when confessions can be heard. “I became a mortal with the sole intention of manipulating the Chosen Hero into gaining the Triforce for me, so I could use it myself to wipe my enemies from this earth.”

Ganondorf doesn’t flinch. “That is exactly what I would have expected you to do.”

Her look is wounded. “That is why I could not do it.” She shakes her head a little, returning her gaze to her hands. “I could not be as terrible as my enemies expected. As ruthless as my servants expected.”

Ganondorf stares at her in amazement. “Why not?”

For what other reason than ultimate power would someone give up their _divinity_?

She folds her hands, closing her eyes. “I did not understand love. It ate me up.”

Ganondorf makes an incredulous noise. “You’re telling me… that _love_ stopped a goddess from attaining ultimate power. Love.”

Zelda looks cross. “Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work,” she snaps. Then her face softens. “I was in love before I knew I was. I don’t remember not loving him.”

She traces circles and patterns upon her white dress. “He was lazy and a sleepyhead and never spoke. He looked at me like I was the stars, even before anything had happened. I had to defend him from teenage bullies. He was mine in the way Hyrule was mine: without question. And he,” she closes her eyes, shuddering. “He did all that I asked of him. He was my pawn. He killed a Demon King, just for me. He became worthy of the Triforce, won the trials in the Silent Realm. He came to wake me up.”

The last sentence is soft and quiet and gentle. She says them like they are sacred.

“It’s because of _me_ … that I dragged him into this whole mess. It’s because of me that he is the pawn of the gods, every time. It is because he killed a Demon King that he and I are cursed to forever reincarnate. If I could… if I could possibly have changed anything… I would never have got him involved. I would have taken up the sword and been brave and done it myself.”

She smiles, in despair and resignation, at her hands.

“But I was stuck on the railroads of fate. My past self bound me. I could do nothing more but act out my part and watch as everyone else fell in line.”

“You,” she says, looking up at him. “You want to rebel against the gods. I see it in your eyes. But there can be no rebelling. Every wish on the Triforce was already going to happen. This was all in the plan of the Golden Goddesses, a long, long time ago.”

There are tears brimming in her eyes. “All we can do is… is to take joy in the presence of the people we love.” She sighs deeply, tears tracking their way down her face.

The next part is monotone, spoken with none of the emotion she had held before. “When I died, I was sent to the spirit realm, and there I stayed. I was only called to world by the prayer of those who remember me. But there is so much time in which my people have forgotten me. I spend time with those who have been petrified, or otherwise lost their bodies. Sometimes, when the Master Sword is damaged, Fi is here…”

Zelda smiles briefly, but Ganondorf does not know who Fi is.

“That’s my monologue over,” she says, and coughs as if her throat can become dry.

“Well,” Ganondorf comments, digesting all of that. “I can safely say that there is no way I could have expected that.”

It’s true. At least he has an answer to why the boy follows the Princess and becomes her pawn so willingly. An echo of that first love through time. His anger towards her has cooled somewhat, hearing her defeatism in the face of the Golden Goddesses. Ganondorf still has not given up hope of rebelling. The time for people talking him out of it is long, long gone. In another country and lifetime.

“Can I ask you something?” he breaks the silence.

Zelda nods.

“How did you know I was an enemy?”

“The Master Sword only seals away evil,” Zelda says, like it’s obvious.

“If you knew I was an enemy right from the beginning… why did you stay by my side?”

Zelda looks surprised. “I didn’t want to be alone,” she shrugs and then grins. “Plus the sex was pretty great, too.”

He laughs slightly, part of him wondering if she wanted that from the beginning and part of him wondering if that means she wants to do it again. They have to do something to fill up the time.

“I’ll ask you something,” she says, amused. “Who did you think I was?”

Ganondorf is long past being embarrassed, but he is not one to admit his mistakes, either. “No one,” he says coolly, raising an eyebrow. Zelda laughs uproariously at him. She holds her sides and everything.

They sit there. The sun is rising over the mountains in the east. It paints the sky light blue and when the light filters down into the Spring of Power, it turns Zelda’s hair to the finest of gold. The night is over.

Zelda stands up, wobbly on her feet. She holds out her hand to Ganondorf. “Come on,” she says. “I have something to show you.”

…

The Spring of Power is close to Death Mountain. It does not take much time at all for them to reach the peak of the Mountain. Being ghosts, the heat and steam do not bother them. What bothers Ganondorf is the fact that Zelda is holding his hand as she drags him up the mountain.

At the highest point, Zelda turns and stops. Ganondorf looks down at her, but she points behind him and he turns to see what she is looking at.

Hyrule is spread out before them. The green and fair lands of their hearts. The wind he had so coveted. The wilderness of Hyrule abandoned by these jealous gods, ready and waiting for whoever is willing to explore them. The rivers and lakes leading down to the sea. The snowy mountains. The desert of his youth in the distance.

Four lasers pierce the sky, all connecting at Hyrule Castle. The boy is nearly ready. It is almost time for destiny to intervene again and the kingdom be restored to the will of the gods.

“Who,” asks Zelda, her words soft in the wind, “knows Hyrule the most?”

Ganondorf stares at her blankly. “I was the last man to ever remember it, to remember that kingdom. My desert. You founded it. Is this a competition, my dear lady?”

Zelda shakes her head. “It is neither of us,” she tells him. “The person who Hyrule belongs to most is Link.”

They turn, looking almost instinctively, with wondrous longing. Somewhere there is a boy. On a horse, or not on a horse, whichever way it goes. Perhaps a fairy rides in his green cap; perhaps not. Perhaps his hair is blond or brown or pink. Perhaps his eyes are sky-blue, sea-blue, black. No matter what he looks like, he is out there somewhere, alive and never speaking.

“Who travels the whole of Hyrule?” Zelda whispers to the wind, as if her words can be carried by it. “Who crosses the sea, the sky, the twilight, time, mountains, meadows, deserts? Who has befriended every race in Hyrule a thousand times over? Who always fulfils their promises?”

Kings and princesses can argue over Hyrule, can send their pawns to bleed, can rage to the gods about injustice. It is Link who is down in the mud, solving problems, bearing burdens, going on right to the very end. It is Link who gives his life and skin and soul to save Hyrule, again and again and again. It is Link who will never rule it and that is why it is his.

“It would be better for them to forget about me,” Zelda says, head tilted towards the sky. “Perhaps it is better for there to be no monarchy. To forget about the Triforce, and princesses with the same name and blood. To have a green and fair land that can simply exist instead of being carved up over who owns it. To have no legends. Perhaps it is a good thing, to not worship your rulers as gods.”

Ganondorf, silent, wonders if this is what Daphnes felt like as he wished upon the Triforce.

Zelda turns to him, looking up, and there is desperation in her face. “I am trapped here because of my choices,” she says, brutally honest. “Because of what I did for my country. But you have a way out of here, one day.”

She says, pleading, “Do not waste your life, Ganondorf Dragmire. Not on the same old failed ambition.”

Ganondorf gazes down at her.

He is the unbreakable man. The man who rebelled against the gods, who has lost almost everything in pursuit of power. He is the man who cannot be talked with, cannot be negotiated with, can only be stopped by the bite of arrows and slice of a blade. He is the immortal wizard who arises again and again and again to fight the heroes, to fight those impossibly stacked odds. Not because of reincarnation, not because of revenge, but purely to get what he desires.

“I will think about it,” he replies.

And that is enough for the both of them.

…

“He will come soon,” Zelda murmurs. They are sitting on the peak of the spike, legs swinging out into empty space. Neither of them have anything to fear. They are ghosts and nothing in this world can harm them except each other.

“What?”

“Link. He will come soon. For the final prayer.” Her hands are grasped together as she leans forward, eyes drinking up her once and future kingdom. Ganondorf knows that expression. It is the expression of someone who looks upon something dear that they have to leave behind forever.

The land of Hyrule is lit up slowly as the sun rises.

He reaches out and he takes her hand. It is warm in his and she looks at him, surprised.

“They will call you again,” he says. “The Sheikah do not forget.”

Her surprise morphs into laughter. “Such a man as you, trying to comfort me,” she says wryly. “I must be a goddess indeed if I can get men to do such things.”

She laughs and he watches her, pleased that one who has suffered so much can laugh like this. Halfway, her laughter is cut off. Her back straightens, eyes becoming distant. Her golden hair glows like the sunrise. Her hand is cold in his.

“What is it?”

“There is… there is a girl. In the spirit world. One of me.” Zelda snaps back to reality, staring at Ganondorf. “She – she dresses like a pirate queen!”

Ah. The pirate brat commeth, to wreak her revenge. What has happened that the child has turned to stone or worse? “I think I know who you’re talking about,” he says slowly. “She does not call herself Zelda. She has never known this green land.”

Zelda blinks. In the growing light, she does not resemble a goddess. She looks like any other girl, uncertain of the future but determined to face it. “It sounds like a future we can only hope for.”

“We can all keep each other company,” Ganondorf drawls, and Zelda laughs.

Ganondorf has no desire to apologise. But he will explain himself to Tetra. He will tell her all about everything he remembers about his countries, both his own and the one he was born to. Ganondorf will ask the future not to forget this land of Hyrule, these green and fair fields. The future may yet understand him.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. I’ve rewritten these notes countless times. I have to say something here.
> 
> I didn’t intend to write Zelgan. It just… happened. Naturally. It was weird. I much prefer them as competitors for Hyrule. But it happened anyway. Sometimes things like that do. I think I ship them only now after writing it, haha.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed all the Zelda in-jokes I dotted around. Make 2k17 the year we all have goron reproduction jokes in our fanfics.
> 
> I wish more people would do cross-timeline Zelda fics; they fascinate me the most. Botw!Zelda meeting TP!Link? ST!Zelda and MM!Link? Yesssssss.
> 
> I know I won’t get many hits because this is a small fandom but I worked really hard on this so I would like to know what you all thought haha. I would like to write more in the future for Zelda.
> 
> If you got into Zelda from BotW and have any Qs about the lore, hit me up. I’ve been playing this series for 10 years. I basically have a BA in Zelda Mythology.
> 
> I still literally cannot believe I wrote a fic in which WW Ganondorf and SS Zelda are fwb, and Zelda does a “everything the light touches is my kingdom” to Ganondorf. Take Word away from me.


End file.
